Christopher Leigh Williams is an American medical physicist and NASA astronaut candidate. He resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Christopher L. Williams | |
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Born | 1983 (age 38–39) New York City, U.S. |
Status | Active |
Alma mater |
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Occupation |
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Space career | |
NASA astronaut | |
Selection | NASA Group 23 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics |
Thesis | Initial exploration of 21-cm cosmology with imaging and power spectra from the Murchison Widefield Array (2012) |
Doctoral advisor | Jacqueline Hewitt |
Williams grew up in Potomac, Maryland. He graduated Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland in 2001. He graduated from Stanford University in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a doctorate in physics from MIT in 2012, where his research was in astrophysics. Williams is a board-certified medical physicist, completing his residency training at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty as a clinical physicist and researcher.[1][2]
Before his Ph.D., Williams worked at the United States Naval Research Laboratory and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He most recently worked as a medical physicist in the Radiation Oncology Department at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He was the lead physicist for the Institute’s MRI-guided adaptive radiation therapy program. His research focused on developing image guidance techniques for cancer treatments.[3][2]
On December 6, 2021, Williams was selected to join NASA's 23rd astronaut candidate class.[4]
NASA Astronaut Group 23, "The Flies", 2021 | |||||||
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NASA Astronaut Group 22 ← NASA Astronaut Group 23 → NASA Astronaut Group 24 | |||||||
Emirati partner astronauts:
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